The dervish
Lebensform is founded upon the moral obligation to be intelligent which, when practiced with diligence in a world that resists it, induces bewilderment.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind/
Cannot bear very much reality.
(Eliot, "Burnt Norton").
Bewilderment causes some to recoil in fear, others to go neurotically or even psychotically mad, and still others to
thirst ever more intensely.
These last--the thirsty ones--are the dervishes.
Literature, song, dance, painting, calligraphy--all of the arts take them to ecstasy. And yet,
These are only hints and guesses/
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest/
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action...
(Eliot, "The Dry Salvages").
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